Maryland's All-Classical Music Station
Zarzuela is a Spanish musical theater genre that isn’t produced in this area very often, so I was thrilled when I had a chance to chat with mezzo Laura Virella and music director David Peralto about the current production of “Revoltosa” at GALA Hispanic Theatre in D.C.. The show runs through October 2; information is available at 202-234-7174 or galatheatre.org.
L-R: Christian Laguna, Laura Virella, and Luis A. Benitez in a scene from “Revoltosa.” Photo credit: Daniel Martinez.
My husband and I are outliers in a number of ways, one of which is that we still dress up when we go to the theater or the opera. We’re both vintage enthusiasts as well and enjoy researching the proper attire for a particular era when we attend “period” (usually 1920’s) events. Well, we did, when going out was an option, and we can’t wait until it’s safe to do those things again.
Fans of Edith Wharton may recall that in The Age of Innocence, Ellen Olenska declines a last-minute invitation to the Old Met because she doesn’t think her dress is appropriate. Back in the day, dressing formally for the opera was not a matter of personal choice, as it is now – it was de rigueur. Certain evening clothes and accessories became popular because they looked great as one swanned around the lobby or checked out the occupants of the other boxes through – you guessed it – opera glasses. Some of these resembled miniature binoculars, while others were the lorgnette style – small spectacles attached to a folding handle or worn on a chain. They were made in a variety of materials, from enameled base metal to gold or silver set with gemstones.
Opera gloves were an essential part of a Victorian lady’s formal theater-going outfit and remained popular for many years. They are still worn by some brides, prom-goers, and gala attendees today. The most recognizable style of opera gloves is the mousquetaire – the long, over the elbow type with buttons near the wrist to allow the wearer to eat or drink without removing the gloves entirely. (Having sported this type of gloves on a few special occasions, I’d add that the greatest challenge in wearing them is often keeping them buttoned when you’re not at dinner!) They were usually made of silk or kidskin leather.
Of course, a woman attending the opera wouldn’t want to top off her Worth gown (or in later decades, her Lucille, Schiaparelli, or Balenciaga) with everyday outerwear. Nor would a gentleman finish off his top hat and tails with a casual coat. As such, the opera cloak was born! Men’s and women’s opera cloaks date back to the 1840’s and were made of flamboyantly colored silk or velvet, often trimmed in fur. As the Victorian era progressed, men’s formal cloaks were typically black, floor length, and fastened at the neck. Women’s opera cloaks and coats also came in black, although colorful ones remained in vogue as well. My personal favorites are the 1920’s and 1930’s silk velvet styles, which are quite collectible and continue to inspire designers today.
The opera hat, or top hat, as it’s now more commonly known, was invented in the 19th century. A London hatter named Thomas Francis Dollman came up with the brilliant idea of creating a collapsible top hat that could easily be stored under one’s theater seat or in the cloak room. These hats were made of the finest silk, so they didn’t come cheap, which made them an aspirational fashion purchase for men in the growing middle class.
Even jewelers got in on the act and gave certain pieces theatrical names that are still in use. These days, a matinee length pearl necklace is typically 20-24 inches long, while an opera length strand is 26-35 inches. My own opera length pearls are about 28 inches long as there are only 63 inches of me.
Back when far more people smoked, even cigarette holders were made in formal styles and lengths considered appropriate for elegant occasions. If you’ve seen Breakfast at Tiffany’s, or just a certain famous photograph of Audrey Hepburn, you’ve seen an opera length cigarette holder. They typically ranged from 16 to 20 inches long! Shorter theater length holders were also made in 10 to 14 inch styles. These were marketed to women; men’s cigarette holders generally didn’t exceed 4 inches in length. Some were made of affordable materials like Bakelite, but they could also be found in gold, silver, and ivory, embellished with precious or semi-precious stones. Plain or fancy, cigarette holders served a number of practical purposes, including reducing the amount of staining to a smoker’s teeth and keeping ashes off of one’s clothing. It must have required quite a bit of grace and poise to keep from getting ash on others when wielding a lit cigarette in a 20-inch holder while navigating a crowded theater lobby. The original social distancing tool, perhaps?
It’s probably no surprise to our listeners that all of WBJC’s announcers have off-air performing experience as singers, actors, or instrumentalists.With that in mind, I’m delighted to announce that our evening host, John T.K. Scherch, will be singing the title role in The Mikado at Young Victorian Theatre Company this summer. Earlier this week, I chatted with Music Director Chris Cicconi about the production.
Leonard Bernstein’s Candide is onstage at the Kennedy Center through May 26th. Recently, I had the immense honor – and pleasure! – of meeting and interviewing internationally renowned mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves, who is playing The Old Woman in this production. She’s as lovely as her voice, both personally and physically, and we had a great chat about Candide, the importance of mentoring young people, and her take on the future of the arts. I’ve included both the broadcast recording of our talk and a special web-only version below.
Many young performers begin their training with their hearts set on working in opera or ballet, but these days, they may find that they have to branch out into other art forms to find gigs. On Saturday, April 14, MedChi and the Baltimore School for the Arts are teaming up to present “The Art of Crossover: From Classical to Broadway”, a conference aimed at helping singers and dancers deal with the challenges they face working in different genres and period styles. I spoke with Dr. Alan Sweatman, Chair of the Performing Arts Medicine Committee of MedChi, about the event.
These days, it’s not at all uncommon for symphony orchestras or even opera companies to present musical theater works. However, the reverse – doing an opera – is a daring move for a theater company! Earlier this week, I spoke with Music Director Ben Shaver about Stillpointe Theatre’s current production of Leonard Bernstein’s “Trouble in Tahiti.”
It’s less and less common to see classical music represented in popular culture these days, especially in a positive sense, so imagine my delight when I recently saw that Turner Classic Movies was airing Love Me Forever, a 1935 film starring Metropolitan Opera soprano Grace Moore. I’m rather ashamed to admit I didn’t know Moore’s work prior to seeing the film – I just happened to be browsing TCM’s broadcast schedule, noticed the words “opera singer” in the plot summary, and set my DVR to record.
Moore was born in Mary Willie Grace Moore in Slabtown, Tennessee on December 5, 1898. She briefly studied music in Nashville before moving to Washington, D.C. and then to New York, where she got her first professional singing gig at the Black Cat Cafe in Greenwich Village. She performed in musicals and revues by Jerome Kern and Irving Berlin during the 1920’s, then moved to Paris to study opera. Moore made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Mimi in La Boheme on February 7, 1928. She must have made quite a hit as she went on to reprise the role at Covent Garden and sang sixteen seasons at The Met! Her repertoire featured French and Italian operas, notably the title role in Charpentier’s Louise, her favorite opera and considered by many her finest portrayal.
A number of opera singers were drawn to Hollywood after the advent of talking pictures, and Moore was among them. She made her screen debut in the 1930 film A Lady’s Morals, playing 19th-century soprano Jenny Lind. Later that year, she co-starred with Met colleague Lawrence Tibbett in New Moon, a screen adaptation of The New Moon by Sigmund Romberg. Following a four-year hiatus from pictures, she played a small-town girl who aspires to be an opera singer in One Night of Love – art imitating life? – a role that garnered her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Sadly, she was killed in a 1947 plane crash near Copenhagen’s airport when she was just 48 years old.
Love Me Forever is quintessential Depression-era entertainment in that it features characters who lose their fortunes, romance between people from vastly different backgrounds, class struggle, and visual escapism via absolutely stunning sets and costumes. Designer Robert Kalloch must have had a field day working on this project – the dress Moore wears when she sings Quando me’n vo’ in a nightclub is the epitome of opera costuming a la 1930’s Hollywood.
Moore plays society woman Margaret Howard, well-born but broke due to the Depression. Forced to auction off her personal belongings and family heirlooms, she avoids watching the sale, choosing to play the piano and sing in the room next door instead. Gangster Steve Correlli (wonderfully played by Leo Carrillo) and his right-hand man Luigi (Luis Alberni) are in attendance at the auction, intent on buying up the Howard family’s antiques. An avid music lover, Correlli hears Margaret’s voice and is instantly smitten. He gets her a job as a nightclub singer, then decides she’s meant to be an operatic soprano and opens a fancy nightclub as a showcase for her. Some bigwigs from the Met are persuaded to stop in at the club, they’re bowled over by Margaret’s performance, and suddenly, she’s hired to sing Mimi at the Met! (I’m sure my friends who are actively pursuing full-time opera careers would love a break like that.)
All doesn’t go smoothly, however – Steve has fallen in love with Margaret, but she’s announced her intention to marry Boston socialite Phillip Cameron (Robert Allan.) In despair, Steve continues to champion Margaret’s career, but drinks and gambles in an attempt to soothe his pain. Love Me Forever contains some opera-worthy plot twists and is a tale of love – not only the romantic sort, but of friendship – that’s well worth watching.
I’m always on the lookout for interesting reading material, so when I recently read a New Yorker review of Alexander Chee’s The Queen of the Night, my eyes got a bit wider. A novel that combines several of my passions – opera, history, jewelry, and fashion – sounded like exactly what I’d been seeking.
Not many contemporary writers set their works in the world of classical music, so the fact that Mr. Chee decided to make Lilliet Berne, his protagonist, an opera singer rather than an actress intrigued me. I’ve started reading the novel and discovered that his knowledge of music goes far beyond merely dropping a composer’s name now and then. Curious, I did a bit of internet sleuthing, and guess what I discovered?
http://www.vogue.com/13394310/alexander-chee-the-queen-of-the-night-interview/
So far, I’ve discovered one major error in Mr. Chee’s description of vintage fashion – nerd alert on my part, yes, but this is a big deal given that the item in question figures very prominently in the narrative. That said, so far, I’m enjoying the book and will post a full review once I finish reading it.
Meantime, here’s Joan Accocella’s New Yorker review, which alerted me to the book’s existence and inspired me to download it that very same day:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/02/22/alexander-chees-the-queen-of-the-night
Maryland Lyric Opera is presenting their production of Gounod’s opera inspired by Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet from this weekend. The company’s founder and Executive Director, Brad Clark, came into WBJC to talk about it.
Richard Strauss’s Guntram is not to be confused with Saint Guntram, who was the king of Burgundy from 561 to 592. Rather, he was the young Strauss’s own concoction for his first opera, written very much under the influence of Wagner in 1894, and revised in 1940.
Richard Strauss’s collaboration with the librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal is legendary, and was, in every respect, a good thing, given the rather far-fetched libretto that Strauss himself wrote for Guntram – although, it has to be said, no more far fetched than many much more famous operas. Donal Henehan, writing in the New York Times on January 21, 1983 after the American premiere of the opera at Carnegie Hall, describes it this way:
“[The libretto] tells an unconvincing tale of the gentle minstrel-knight Guntram, who sets out to promote universal brotherhood through song but accidentally murders the husband of the woman he loves. In the best Romantic tradition, he ends by renouncing fleshly pleasures and going off to spend his days contemplating his guilt.”
The wonder lies in the music itself. Just as it is thrilling to hear the musical voice emerging in the early symphonies of composers like Schubert or Dvorak, it is intriguing to hear the first iterations of Strauss’s later operas – Der Rosenkavalier, Die Frau ohne Schatten, Arabella, Daphne – threaded through Guntram. He also quotes from this first opera in his autobiographical tone poem, Ein Heldenleben.
Bravo to Washington Concert Opera and their Artistic Director and conductor, Antony Walker, for mounting only the second performance in the States of this rare Strauss opera. They will present a concert version in Lisner Auditorium at George Washington University in D.C. on Sunday, March 1st at 6.00 p.m.
More details here: http://www.concertopera.org/index.php/current_season/about_opera/guntram/